Sunday, January 26, 2014

In
the June 6, 2009, edition of the Detroit Free Press, inter-nationally
renowned and best-selling author, journalist, screen-writer, playwright,
radio and television broadcaster and musician– and Freep sports columnist – Mitch Albom compared the return of Detroit Red Wings Center Pavel Datsyuk to a chiropractic adjustment. “But his presence was like a chiropractic adjustment for the Wings; it put steam in their stride,” Albom
wrote in a column after the Wings won game 5 of the Stanley Cup Finals.
Professional athletes have long been one of chiropractic care’s biggest
proponents. NFL Hall of Fame wide receiver Jerry Rice is the latest
athlete to come out for chiropractic through the Foundation for
Chiropractic Progress. Other prominent athletes who have promoted
chiropractic or credited its use in improving their performance include:
former San Francisco 49er Roger Craig; New York Yankee outfielder Johnny Damon; NFL Hall of Famer New York Giant Harry Carson; and Philadelphia Phillies pitcher Cole Hamels. Many professional sports franchises have a DC on staff; in fact, 31 of
the 32 NFL teams employ a chiropractor as part of the triage in managing
and preventing injuries (including the Detroit Lions, whose team
chiropractor, Dr. Sol Cogan,
is a longtime MAC member who currently serves as Chair of the Michigan
Board of Chiropractic). Only one team does not publicly admit to using
chiropractic care - the Oakland Raiders. Many NBA, NHL, and college
teams also regularly provide chiropractic care for their athletes.

Saturday, January 25, 2014

Hockey player scores with chiropractic

After almost a decade playing in the
National Hockey League, Gary Roberts feared that his days as a
professional athlete were finished.

Thirty years old at the time and a left winger for the Calgary
Flames, Roberts suffered a neck injury that left him with severe nerve
damage and numbness in his arms. Repeated surgeries and rehab had little
effect.

“I couldn’t hold a steak knife to cut my food,” he recalls. “My career was over. I was a pretty lost soul.”

But then, after a visit to a sports
chiropractor in 1996 to relieve stress and reduce scar tissue in his
upper spine and neck, Roberts regained his strength and mobility. He
returned to the ice to play professional hockey for another 13 years.

“It saved my life,” says Roberts, who eventually retired from the NHL
four years ago. He is now an advocate of chiropractic treatment as a
complement to proper nutrition and training techniques — a program
offered in his eponymously named Gary Roberts High Performance Centre at
the Fitness Institute in North York. His highly regarded fitness and
nutrition regimen is customized to his clients, be they elite and junior
hockey players or business executives who want to be physically active.

“[Whether] you’re a professional athlete or a weekend warrior, the
results are the same — your body gets beaten up,” says Roberts.
“Chiropractors have taken sports to a new level.”

Dr. Mark Scappaticci agrees. Integrated techniques such as active
release techniques (ART), manipulation and acupuncture are increasingly
used to help athletes recover from injury and to perform at their best,
says Dr. Scappaticci, a sports chiropractor who practices in Niagara
Falls and Toronto. Roberts has been a client of his, as well as Olympic
gold medallists Donovan Bailey and Jackie Joyner-Kersee.

Currently, Dr. Scappaticci is on staff at the Toronto Blue Jays front office as a consulting chiropractor.

Sports chiropractors understand the biomechanics of different sports
and the injuries that can result from them, he says — injuries typically
related to the build-up of abnormal tension in tissues, which increases
with repetitive use of those muscles.

In order to restore and enhance function, sports chiropractors apply
research-based therapies involving soft tissues (muscles), the nervous
system and the joints.

“When those three things are operating optimally, we can optimize
biomechanics,” Dr. Scappaticci explains. He also points out that there
are long-range benefits from treatment beyond sessions on the track or
rink, where results are immediate. “We are talking about significant

improvements in performance parameters.”

Chiropractic techniques, along with an integrated approach involving
other types of therapies such as massage and osteopathy, can help
athletes across the sports spectrum, from football and hockey to squash
and golf. He says they work “phenomenally” with elite athletes who want
to recover from injury and perform maximally. But the results are “even
more astounding,” he notes, for non-pro-athlete patients with active
lifestyles — say, those experiencing knee stiffness from jogging or
shoulder pain from swinging a golf club.

Newer methods used by chiropractors, such as ART and acupuncture,
appear to be helpful in treating the strains, tears, imbalances in
muscle groups and tendon inflammation that lead to injuries in all types
of athletes, says Dr. John Theodoropoulos, an orthopaedic surgeon and
sports medicine specialist at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto.

And although the medical community would like to see more scientific
research on the effect of chiropractic in sports, Dr. Theodoropoulos
says those who receive chiropractic care swear by the results. “When
athletes refer to their doctor,” he says, “their doctor is usually a
doctor of chiropractic.”

Meanwhile, Dr. Scappaticci is planning a study beginning in October,
wherein members of Britain’s Olympic track-and-field team will receive
different levels and types of chiropractic treatment, after which their
performance will be compared and analyzed. He’s interested in helping
athletes achieve their full potential through an integrated approach to
chiropractic and to be able to do it injury-free.

“If you want to improve outcomes,” he says, “you have to have more tools in your toolbox.”

Tuesday, January 14, 2014

At Bat: Baseball and Chiropractic

Baseball season is upon us! Chiropractic and baseball have had a strong association throughout the years. In “Baseball & Chiropractic: Maturing Together” (Chiropractic History,
vol. 29., no. 1, 2009, pp. 15-18), Steven Parker, D.C., states: “. . .
throughout the twentieth century, baseball’s professional athletes came
to rely on chiropractic for both the treatment and prevention of
injuries. Today, chiropractic has become an integral part of the
healthcare team within professional sports.” Parker describes players
such as pitcher Mordecai “Three-Finger” Brown, who he speculates as
being in 1911 the first professional athlete to receive chiropractic
treatment. The Hall of Famers Babe Ruth, Joe DiMaggio, and Lou Gehrig are also known to have benefited from chiropractic treatment throughout their careers.

The image here is of the Palmer School of Chiropractic (P.S.C.) baseball team in 1938. Student Daze,
the 1938 yearbook, details the 1937-38 baseball season as very
successful despite the hot weather and the “disadvantage of the fairer
sex attracting the attention of a few of our outstanding players.” At
this time, Palmer played in the same league as the U.S. Engineers,
French and Hecht, Firestone, Victor, International Harvester, and the
Y.M.C.A. Reserves. Team leaders for the season included Wolfe with a
.385 batting average and 4 home runs, Clements and Rising with 13
singles, and Schmidt with 19 runs batted in.
Interested in being a sports chiropractor? Consider joining the Professional Baseball Chiropractic Society,
which was founded in 1995 “to integrate chiropractic into professional
sports and build a network of practitioners to call on.” To learn more
about chiropractors for successful teams, check out “St. Louis Cardinals: Primed for a Pennant” (Today’s Chiropractic,
vol. 30, no. 3, 2001, pp. 34-38). The article contains a fascinating
interview with Dr. Ralph Filson, who followed in his father’s footsteps
to become the team chiropractor for the Cardinals. In an interview on
the American Chiropractic Association web site, Michael Trancedi, D.C., discusses what it was like to be a sports chiropractor with the Philadelphia Phillies in the 2008 World Series Championship.Reference: blogs.palmer.edu

Thursday, January 9, 2014

Pregnant Running

The
old-school thinking about pregnancy was that women should exercise very
little--or not at all. Fortunately, times have changed, and doctors
routinely advise expectant mothers to stay active.

After you get your doctor's go-ahead, your mileage is determined in
part by how much you were doing before. If you regularly ran five miles
a day, you can keep logging those miles, albeit at a gradually slowing
pace. So if you ran an eight-minute mile, you may find an 11-minute mile
during pregnancy is just as challenging.

As your due date approaches, lower-impact activities like swimming and walking may be more comfortable.

Continuing to run during pregnancy isn't only about doing something
you enjoy. Studies show that exercise improves the health of mom and
baby--it lessens back pain, prevents excessive weight gain, improves
sleep quality, and reduces delivery complications and time spent in
labor.

Tuesday, January 7, 2014

Sports Chiropractic Treatment for Running Injuries

The lifecycle of a running injury is not always linear.
The cycle of many running injuries goes something like this: After
admitting that the pain was more than just soreness, you listened to
your orthopedic surgeon talk about options ranging from surgery to
rehabilitation. You spent months in physical therapy trying to rebuild
strength and repair soft tissue damage, eventually hitting a plateau,
only to wonder if you'll ever go out for a run again.
The desire to get back out to run is why many runners seek
alternative rehabilitation plans that include seeing a sports
chiropractor for targeted treatments for their injuries. In my case,
after two months in physical therapy, my pain was shifting from my hip
to my iliotibial band and psoas muscle, and I knew that it was time to
try something new if I ever wanted to run again (or even sit for any
length of time).Why see a sports chiropractor for a running injury?
Although physical therapy is often the first line of defense in
rehabbing a running injury, many athletes and runners have started to
rely on sports medicine-trained chiropractors. While physical therapy
can focus on strengthening and coordination, chiropractic care is
designed to improve joint mobilization, making sure that all the joints
in the body are moving correctly. Hirad Bagy, founder of the United
Wellness Center in Herndon, Va., and team chiropractor for the
Washington Redskins, Washington Nationals and DC United, believes that
sports chiropractic care has evolved to incorporate the best of both
worlds of joint mobilization techniques and soft tissue repair,
creating a new gold standard of best practices in treatment plans for
patients.
Bagy emphasizes that not only do all the joints in the body need to
move correctly, but they also need to move in coordination with the
soft tissue – a healthy body is one where all the factors are working
well together. Runners who decide to visit a sports chiropractor should
expect, according to Bagy, a thorough evaluation of bio-mechanics by
their practitioner, including:
• How they are moving.
• How they are standing.
• What the arch of the foot looks like.
• How the knees are aligned.
• How the hips are aligned.
Once an evaluation is completed, sports chiropractors will, as Bagy
explains, create the "recipe for the treatment stew" – taking into
account the needs of each specific patient to decide between a variety
of techniques, each designed to help the body regenerate healthy cells
to "activate healing mechanisms."[Read: How to Identify a Running Injury.]Four types of chiropractic treatment for running injuries1. Active Release Technique (ART) is a combination
of massage and stretching where trained therapists apply deep tension
while they move a joint through a range of motion. ART is used
primarily for adhesions deep in the muscle.2. Graston Technique is a therapy best used for
surface level scar tissue that uses handheld stainless steel tools to
break down scar tissue-releasing adhesions.3. Functional dry needling is used for very deep
trigger points to release tension in the muscles through deep muscle
stimulation provided by the needles. Dry needling can be helpful for
injuries involving the psoas muscle, which is a critical hip flexor
muscle for runners.4. Electrical muscle stimulation (EMS) stimulates surface muscles to contract releasing tension as a complement to other techniques.[Read: Physical Therapy for Running Injuries.]Active Release Technique for runners
After three months of not being able to run, in almost constant pain
ranging from my iliotibial band to the back of my hip and then into my
psoas muscle, I was admittedly ready for anything when my orthopedist
suggested trying Active Release Technique. According to Bagy, the
reason that Active Release Technique can be beneficial – especially for
iliotibial band and hip injuries – is that it combines different
muscle work that breaks down scar tissue while also emphasizing correct
flexibility. Through Active Release, as Bagy explains, you can
actually "elongate some of the muscle fibers making those muscles more
pliable and therefore healthier."
Anyone preparing for ART should know that this is not a particularly
gentle treatment. I tried telling myself that it would be like a deep
tissue massage, which I enjoy, although I quickly learned that while
highly effective (after three weeks my pain, though still there, was
incrementally improving), the pressure and work on the muscles is deep
and sometimes painful.[Read: 5 Keys to Injury-Free Running.]How to stay healthy for the long term
Staying healthy is a constant concern for professional athletes who
get constant care from stretching to active release to heat or ice.
Most adults or mature athletes, on the other hand, do not make the time
every day to use a foam roller, apply ice or heat or keep up with
stretching. Runners who have overcome an injury should consider ongoing
preventive care, ranging from every two weeks to every six weeks to
maintain progress and reduce future injuries.[Read: A Beginners' Guide to Running.]